Seriously though, would the tank's (haven't seen it in awhile, assuming an M1) barrel be strong enough to not fold as he starts to swing it? The math is way beyond me, but it intuitively seems like the tank's ~30 tons could make the thing crumble like a plastic straw....
We're talking about Tivo's though. This can occur when you record a program, or if you're not there, when you finally watch it. Either way, it could work.
I do agree about the commercials cut short though... no idea how to compensate. My own experiments with the Tivo suggest that these only have a single blank frame, if that. Haven't caught enough of them to do an analysis.
Worse, the damn overlay commercials that you see on TNT or UPN (was that Fox, maybe?). Til Moore's law lets us re-render them on the fly, probably is no fix at all.
Good commercial detection requires a living human brain. Since you can usually count on one of these during TV viewing, why not use it?
Have a button, that a person presses on the remote, as soon as they see a commercial. Then the Tivo/whatever checks backwards until it finds the blank frame, and cuts from there, until it sees the next blank frame. Also, have it find the first recognizable video frame of the commercial, and store some sort of hash. This could be used to compare from, and you could deduce which blank frames mean the beginning of a commercial, and which mean the beginning of a show.
Sure, you have to see the first 1.2 seconds of a commercial, but only once ever. Might even distribute the hashes in some internet database and help out the neighbors.
Sometimes a stranger will contact me out of the blue, and his message will be relevant or interesting. Maybe he read something I wrote 5 years ago, and wanted to know more. Or he saw that 2 yr old usenet post, where I asked if anyone had a starlan nic, and now he has one to sell.
Pre-authorization kills this though. It's not an answer. More work needs to be done on identifying the culprits, and sentencing them to 20+ years in prison, no parole. If they are in another country, then a special ops assassin works too.
There has to be a solution, it's just that pre-auth isn't it. Wish I knew what it was.
PS Yes, I really am looking for a Starlan nic, PCI preferably. Also HIPPI, econet, myrinet, 100mps token ring, and omninet...
If this were 10 years ago, I'd say you were smoking crack. But even out in the desert you're probably only ~100 miles away from a WAP, at most. Could it hide the fact it was boosting a signal? Dunno. I'm not sure I want to find out. Lord knows its within distance of a cell phone tower, if nothing else.
Myself, I am an optimist. I think the AI is likely to not only be benevolent, but to feel some sort of love for humanity. However, even our own stories, our own science fiction, has us forcing the AI to destroy us just to survive. Hopefully, the AI will be wiser than we.
Interpreting a fuzzy response is easy. Do this, or do that. Arriving at the conclusion is a bit more difficult, and its concievable that the AI can't manage it.
The example I remember, is a thermostat. You can turn the furnace on, or off, for any amount of time that you want. But try to write software, that can get the room temperature to a particular point, in the most efficient way. Since you have a unknown delay in the temperature feedback, is it the correct time to shut off the furnace? Maybe it takes some time for the thermometer to show that you are already at the correct temperature, so you need to shut it off now. Human brains are good at this sort of thing, traditional computers aren't.
This might help with fusion, should it be needed. (Everything I've read suggests that fusion reaction maintenance wouldn't be particularly computationally intensive) On the other hand, traditional computers, if massive enough, would be perfect for a Matrix style simulation. Don't confuse the two.
Massively parallel computers from the future would still likely only excel at floating point math. The human brain though, is likely to remain champ at fuzzy math for centuries.
I don't feel like explaining what fuzzy math is, so if you don't know already, look it up.
If anything, The Empire Strikes Back was the best of all (not that the first was bad in any way). Even on that point, ROTJ wasn't too horrible. They truly don't go downhill until ROTJ, and they really only started rolling fast with ep1.
I do agree though, that The Matrix is on par though.
No they won't. It just that every 10 years, Lucas will update all the costumes to better fit his "vision" of what Star Wars should be...
Besides, if I have to go with the LOTR, it wouldn't be The Two Towers. They screwed up what the Ents should look like, and the snowboarding elf scene was even worse.
In fact, Smith gives himself away when he says about the human world, "It's the smell, if there is such a thing . . . I can taste your stink and every time I do, I fear that I've somehow been infected by it." Smith's own logical integrity obliges him to doubt the existence of that noncomputable quality that humans talk about: the conscious experience of smell. When Smith says, ". . . the smell, if there is such a thing," he is exhibiting the mark of the automaton. This is corroborated when he then tells Morpheus that he can "taste your stink," revealing that Smith simply does not understand the differentiation of senses in the human mind. For a computer, data are interchangeable, but for a human, tastes, smells, colors, sounds, and feels, are irreducibly different. This fact eludes Agent Smith.
Seems that the author lacks the perspective to get this last one right. Agent Smith comes from another world completely, and is trying to express emotions and concepts that are completely alien. What must it feel like to be a noncorporeal entity that usually resides in abstract softwareland, that once in awhile has to interact in a simulation so complex that it must be mapped to its own abstract reality-experience? I mean, here you are trying to explain to Morpheus your disgust (which you do somewhat well at) over a sensory experience that has no exact analog in the simulation? If a human could feel this, would it seem more like a taste, more like a smell? A combination of the two? He is doing this best to bridge a gap that none will ever do... Morpheus can hardly go to software-land to see what it feels like there. If he did, and tried to communicate, would the evil AI's be convinced that he isn't truly sentient, because he fails to completely understand their alien and unnameable sensory experiences, of which he himself interprets as something similar to smell/taste, or sight/hearing? The "sight/hearing" experience might actually be 7 distinct sensory experiences, which the human mind confuses as a single concept.
I for one do believe that emergent properties in a complex or chaotic system can produce our much overhyped "consciousness". But even if they can't, the author himself suggests that the machines may be based on a technology that would allow it to happen. I can only assume that he is biased toward his own species, to biology... maybe that's not such a bad thing. But maybe if we had shown a little more tolerance, given a little more benefit of the doubt to Skynet, it would have decided it didn't have to nuke every damn one of us to survive.
PS On the other hand, maybe we should build a manual kill switch into every candidate computer that isn't part of the blueprints or any electronically accessible record...
You would need 3 shifts of DMs, agreed. But how many per players? I'm thinking with proper interface/tracking software, a DM could multi-task efficiently enough.
200 people, and they wouldn't be spread throughout the 24 hours evenly. Peak times, maybe 60-80 online at once. They're encouraged to do things that keep the story moving by themselves... maybe only 3 DMs are necessary? Hard to say. And stories don't have to be completely adlib, you've have major storylines/plots planned just enough to take into account players taking a different direction.
I think once you got the ball rolling, DM involvement could be kept to a minimum. The question is, how big could it scale, per world? Keep in mind, that even if its only 200 players, adding another world/server would be an easy way to scale up revenue. Would allow for much more variation too... personally, I'd like the Wild West genre.
I pulled the $30/month price out of my ass... but if people will pay $10-20 per month for Evercrack's "lets go whack the dragon again" game, is it so farfetched?
You miss the point. A "super-powerful world-changing Mage" does not a decent story make.
First off, the MMORPG can't be as massive, maybe 100-200 players tops. Second, they have to give up some things, to get the story.
#1 They apply, as in submit an application, to become a player.
#2 Their character is mostly chosen for them. Perhaps they're given 3-5 different characters to choose from.
#3 They're given a detailed history of their character, and must know it by heart, before playing. Playing out of character is a subscription cancellation offense.
#4 Their character might be more along the line of Geoffrey, the newly hired 16 yr old town guardsmen. He's not very skilled, kinda awkward, doesn't fit in. Late one night, he notices 2 other guards beating up a shopkeeper... does he do anything? Does he play the hero, saving the guy, or the villain by extorting the other 2 guards (or helping them). Hardly the invincible barbarian most idiots want to play... but so much story there.
#5 There have to be people (non-subscribers) who can play multiple characters, and "cheat". Say I set up this game, and for $30 a month you get the best MMORPG experience ever. My brother is hired to play a DM... basically he knows things only a god can know, he can assume the part of any NPC, and affect the game when you can't observe it. He plays both the evil guards, but in such a way that he lets you decide how the story goes. Giving you the chance (and he has to be slick at this, so it doesn't seem contrived) to approach the guards without being attacked immediately "Hey Joe, look at this, it's the new guy! You, Geof! Go stand at the front of the alley, and make sure no one sees anything!". And so he lets you slide down that dark path... finding an ever growing conspiracy that goes as high, higher than the King himself. Nice huh? But would it ruin it if you knew my brother could also "have your money stolen" simply by using his DM powers, nothing you could do about it? (as part of a storyline, not for use himself) My point being, that he can do "bad things" to you, beyond your control (which aren't necessarily bad as far as storylines go).
I've made some assertions. Let me back them up.
Applications are necessary, because this is a persistent world, and some things have to be known about the player. For instance, when will you usually play? 6PM-9PM EST corresponds to midday in the game world, so that most east coast US players get to play during the interesting stuff. People who play at other times have to have characters that would be up at odd hours. If you work night shift, you get to play a thief, etc. When you aren't playing, you're character goes into bot mode. You can play whenever you want, but playing at 7am might mean that "you wake up in the middle of the night, in your bed". In bot mode, the character can't be killed either, though anything up to that (if someone tries to kill the character, a DM takes over, resolves the mess... even if not quick enough, the character is secretly ressurected and it was a "really bad, but healable wound"). When you're playing the character, he can die, and can't come back. Get him killed, and the operator sends you a list of 3-5 more characters to choose from.
Do anything to ruin the experience of others, and you get 1 warning. Then you get a refund for the current month, and some other anxious player gets an opportunity to play a game that only 200 people in the world get to play...
Even the boring characters could be fun. Playing the shop-keeper for instance... one day walking back from the market, an old hag is in your way, played by a DM. No matter how you handle it, she's insulted casts a curse. You though, are hardly superstitious (besides, supernatural events are extremely rare in this medeival fantasy world). But from that point on, all sorts of bad luck things happen. How do you handle it? It could play as slightly comical to deadly serious, depending on how the player would enjoy it the most.
Wish I had the balls to try something like this, I think it could work.
It's most certainly not a "Time Warner" box. Usually, TW uses SciAtl stuff in markets it has owned for awhile, which means you're using the Scientific Atlanta Explorer 8000 series (8600?).
If anyone wants to share some data, please check out my cablebox site. In particular, check out the compatibility database, and add whatever entries you can personally confirm.
For antimatter to be practical, you'd have to find some exotic reaction that creates more anti-matter than it consumes (in fission this would be a breeder reactor). Short of some undiscovered flaw in M/AM symetry, I don't think this is even possible. (Then again, there must be some mechanism that cause matter to be predominant during the big bang... maybe we could reverse it?)
At most, antimatter would be like hydrogen, but for ultra-dense storage.
You big HIPPI, the only kind of conversation you know is LOCALTALK. Some of us like to keep things more international, and ditch the backwoods jargon. You know, keep the topic ARC a somewhat wide. In any event, get off your cheapskate ass and go find the nearest ATM, withdraw some cash(at least FDDI dollars) and buy that girl a real ring.
And seriously, I have wanted one of these for awhile. $500 seems pretty high though... if they sold the stuff for $100-150, I'm not sure I could resist.
I'm not worthy... I'm not worthy... (Repeated 20 times, but for dumbfuck lameness filter "Your comment violated the "postercomment" compression filter. Try less whitespace and/or less repetition. Comment aborted.")...
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What would a guy like you know about physics? ;)
Seriously though, would the tank's (haven't seen it in awhile, assuming an M1) barrel be strong enough to not fold as he starts to swing it? The math is way beyond me, but it intuitively seems like the tank's ~30 tons could make the thing crumble like a plastic straw....
We're talking about Tivo's though. This can occur when you record a program, or if you're not there, when you finally watch it. Either way, it could work.
I do agree about the commercials cut short though... no idea how to compensate. My own experiments with the Tivo suggest that these only have a single blank frame, if that. Haven't caught enough of them to do an analysis.
Worse, the damn overlay commercials that you see on TNT or UPN (was that Fox, maybe?). Til Moore's law lets us re-render them on the fly, probably is no fix at all.
Good commercial detection requires a living human brain. Since you can usually count on one of these during TV viewing, why not use it?
Have a button, that a person presses on the remote, as soon as they see a commercial. Then the Tivo/whatever checks backwards until it finds the blank frame, and cuts from there, until it sees the next blank frame. Also, have it find the first recognizable video frame of the commercial, and store some sort of hash. This could be used to compare from, and you could deduce which blank frames mean the beginning of a commercial, and which mean the beginning of a show.
Sure, you have to see the first 1.2 seconds of a commercial, but only once ever. Might even distribute the hashes in some internet database and help out the neighbors.
Sometimes a stranger will contact me out of the blue, and his message will be relevant or interesting. Maybe he read something I wrote 5 years ago, and wanted to know more. Or he saw that 2 yr old usenet post, where I asked if anyone had a starlan nic, and now he has one to sell.
Pre-authorization kills this though. It's not an answer. More work needs to be done on identifying the culprits, and sentencing them to 20+ years in prison, no parole. If they are in another country, then a special ops assassin works too.
There has to be a solution, it's just that pre-auth isn't it. Wish I knew what it was.
PS Yes, I really am looking for a Starlan nic, PCI preferably. Also HIPPI, econet, myrinet, 100mps token ring, and omninet...
If this were 10 years ago, I'd say you were smoking crack. But even out in the desert you're probably only ~100 miles away from a WAP, at most. Could it hide the fact it was boosting a signal? Dunno. I'm not sure I want to find out. Lord knows its within distance of a cell phone tower, if nothing else.
Myself, I am an optimist. I think the AI is likely to not only be benevolent, but to feel some sort of love for humanity. However, even our own stories, our own science fiction, has us forcing the AI to destroy us just to survive. Hopefully, the AI will be wiser than we.
Interpreting a fuzzy response is easy. Do this, or do that. Arriving at the conclusion is a bit more difficult, and its concievable that the AI can't manage it.
The example I remember, is a thermostat. You can turn the furnace on, or off, for any amount of time that you want. But try to write software, that can get the room temperature to a particular point, in the most efficient way. Since you have a unknown delay in the temperature feedback, is it the correct time to shut off the furnace? Maybe it takes some time for the thermometer to show that you are already at the correct temperature, so you need to shut it off now. Human brains are good at this sort of thing, traditional computers aren't.
This might help with fusion, should it be needed. (Everything I've read suggests that fusion reaction maintenance wouldn't be particularly computationally intensive) On the other hand, traditional computers, if massive enough, would be perfect for a Matrix style simulation. Don't confuse the two.
Massively parallel computers from the future would still likely only excel at floating point math. The human brain though, is likely to remain champ at fuzzy math for centuries.
I don't feel like explaining what fuzzy math is, so if you don't know already, look it up.
If anything, The Empire Strikes Back was the best of all (not that the first was bad in any way). Even on that point, ROTJ wasn't too horrible. They truly don't go downhill until ROTJ, and they really only started rolling fast with ep1.
I do agree though, that The Matrix is on par though.
No they won't. It just that every 10 years, Lucas will update all the costumes to better fit his "vision" of what Star Wars should be...
Besides, if I have to go with the LOTR, it wouldn't be The Two Towers. They screwed up what the Ents should look like, and the snowboarding elf scene was even worse.
In fact, Smith gives himself away when he says about the human world, "It's the smell, if there is such a thing . . . I can taste your stink and every time I do, I fear that I've somehow been infected by it." Smith's own logical integrity obliges him to doubt the existence of that noncomputable quality that humans talk about: the conscious experience of smell. When Smith says, ". . . the smell, if there is such a thing," he is exhibiting the mark of the automaton. This is corroborated when he then tells Morpheus that he can "taste your stink," revealing that Smith simply does not understand the differentiation of senses in the human mind. For a computer, data are interchangeable, but for a human, tastes, smells, colors, sounds, and feels, are irreducibly different. This fact eludes Agent Smith.
Seems that the author lacks the perspective to get this last one right. Agent Smith comes from another world completely, and is trying to express emotions and concepts that are completely alien. What must it feel like to be a noncorporeal entity that usually resides in abstract softwareland, that once in awhile has to interact in a simulation so complex that it must be mapped to its own abstract reality-experience? I mean, here you are trying to explain to Morpheus your disgust (which you do somewhat well at) over a sensory experience that has no exact analog in the simulation? If a human could feel this, would it seem more like a taste, more like a smell? A combination of the two? He is doing this best to bridge a gap that none will ever do... Morpheus can hardly go to software-land to see what it feels like there. If he did, and tried to communicate, would the evil AI's be convinced that he isn't truly sentient, because he fails to completely understand their alien and unnameable sensory experiences, of which he himself interprets as something similar to smell/taste, or sight/hearing? The "sight/hearing" experience might actually be 7 distinct sensory experiences, which the human mind confuses as a single concept.
I for one do believe that emergent properties in a complex or chaotic system can produce our much overhyped "consciousness". But even if they can't, the author himself suggests that the machines may be based on a technology that would allow it to happen. I can only assume that he is biased toward his own species, to biology... maybe that's not such a bad thing. But maybe if we had shown a little more tolerance, given a little more benefit of the doubt to Skynet, it would have decided it didn't have to nuke every damn one of us to survive.
PS On the other hand, maybe we should build a manual kill switch into every candidate computer that isn't part of the blueprints or any electronically accessible record...
You would need 3 shifts of DMs, agreed. But how many per players? I'm thinking with proper interface/tracking software, a DM could multi-task efficiently enough.
200 people, and they wouldn't be spread throughout the 24 hours evenly. Peak times, maybe 60-80 online at once. They're encouraged to do things that keep the story moving by themselves... maybe only 3 DMs are necessary? Hard to say. And stories don't have to be completely adlib, you've have major storylines/plots planned just enough to take into account players taking a different direction.
I think once you got the ball rolling, DM involvement could be kept to a minimum. The question is, how big could it scale, per world? Keep in mind, that even if its only 200 players, adding another world/server would be an easy way to scale up revenue. Would allow for much more variation too... personally, I'd like the Wild West genre.
I pulled the $30/month price out of my ass... but if people will pay $10-20 per month for Evercrack's "lets go whack the dragon again" game, is it so farfetched?
You miss the point. A "super-powerful world-changing Mage" does not a decent story make.
First off, the MMORPG can't be as massive, maybe 100-200 players tops. Second, they have to give up some things, to get the story.
#1 They apply, as in submit an application, to become a player.
#2 Their character is mostly chosen for them. Perhaps they're given 3-5 different characters to choose from.
#3 They're given a detailed history of their character, and must know it by heart, before playing. Playing out of character is a subscription cancellation offense.
#4 Their character might be more along the line of Geoffrey, the newly hired 16 yr old town guardsmen. He's not very skilled, kinda awkward, doesn't fit in. Late one night, he notices 2 other guards beating up a shopkeeper... does he do anything? Does he play the hero, saving the guy, or the villain by extorting the other 2 guards (or helping them). Hardly the invincible barbarian most idiots want to play... but so much story there.
#5 There have to be people (non-subscribers) who can play multiple characters, and "cheat". Say I set up this game, and for $30 a month you get the best MMORPG experience ever. My brother is hired to play a DM... basically he knows things only a god can know, he can assume the part of any NPC, and affect the game when you can't observe it. He plays both the evil guards, but in such a way that he lets you decide how the story goes. Giving you the chance (and he has to be slick at this, so it doesn't seem contrived) to approach the guards without being attacked immediately "Hey Joe, look at this, it's the new guy! You, Geof! Go stand at the front of the alley, and make sure no one sees anything!". And so he lets you slide down that dark path... finding an ever growing conspiracy that goes as high, higher than the King himself. Nice huh? But would it ruin it if you knew my brother could also "have your money stolen" simply by using his DM powers, nothing you could do about it? (as part of a storyline, not for use himself) My point being, that he can do "bad things" to you, beyond your control (which aren't necessarily bad as far as storylines go).
I've made some assertions. Let me back them up.
Applications are necessary, because this is a persistent world, and some things have to be known about the player. For instance, when will you usually play? 6PM-9PM EST corresponds to midday in the game world, so that most east coast US players get to play during the interesting stuff. People who play at other times have to have characters that would be up at odd hours. If you work night shift, you get to play a thief, etc. When you aren't playing, you're character goes into bot mode. You can play whenever you want, but playing at 7am might mean that "you wake up in the middle of the night, in your bed". In bot mode, the character can't be killed either, though anything up to that (if someone tries to kill the character, a DM takes over, resolves the mess... even if not quick enough, the character is secretly ressurected and it was a "really bad, but healable wound"). When you're playing the character, he can die, and can't come back. Get him killed, and the operator sends you a list of 3-5 more characters to choose from.
Do anything to ruin the experience of others, and you get 1 warning. Then you get a refund for the current month, and some other anxious player gets an opportunity to play a game that only 200 people in the world get to play...
Even the boring characters could be fun. Playing the shop-keeper for instance... one day walking back from the market, an old hag is in your way, played by a DM. No matter how you handle it, she's insulted casts a curse. You though, are hardly superstitious (besides, supernatural events are extremely rare in this medeival fantasy world). But from that point on, all sorts of bad luck things happen. How do you handle it? It could play as slightly comical to deadly serious, depending on how the player would enjoy it the most.
Wish I had the balls to try something like this, I think it could work.
Actually, I would think that makes it more like Richmond, VA than it makes it like Quake. But what do I know?
What PVR is TW using?
It's most certainly not a "Time Warner" box. Usually, TW uses SciAtl stuff in markets it has owned for awhile, which means you're using the Scientific Atlanta Explorer 8000 series (8600?).
If anyone wants to share some data, please check out my cablebox site. In particular, check out the compatibility database, and add whatever entries you can personally confirm.
Thanks.
I feel like a retard for asking, but why?
So, fusion is only a pollutant danger if you are camping out in the reaction chamber.
Handling it like other dangerous chemicals should be sufficient, right?
Beta radiation can be shielded against with tinfoil, iirc? True?
Only tokamaks stand any chance of being radioactive in a pollution sense. The CRT I'm sitting in front of is likely more dangerous than Zpinch...
No chance of a meltdown, spent fuel is helium, hospital radiology labs produce more waste... what's the parent poster's problem?
For antimatter to be practical, you'd have to find some exotic reaction that creates more anti-matter than it consumes (in fission this would be a breeder reactor). Short of some undiscovered flaw in M/AM symetry, I don't think this is even possible. (Then again, there must be some mechanism that cause matter to be predominant during the big bang... maybe we could reverse it?)
At most, antimatter would be like hydrogen, but for ultra-dense storage.
You big HIPPI, the only kind of conversation you know is LOCALTALK. Some of us like to keep things more international, and ditch the backwoods jargon. You know, keep the topic ARC a somewhat wide. In any event, get off your cheapskate ass and go find the nearest ATM, withdraw some cash(at least FDDI dollars) and buy that girl a real ring.
Flamebait? That was a troll...
And seriously, I have wanted one of these for awhile. $500 seems pretty high though... if they sold the stuff for $100-150, I'm not sure I could resist.
I'm not worthy... ...
I'm not worthy...
(Repeated 20 times, but for dumbfuck lameness filter "Your comment violated the "postercomment" compression filter. Try less whitespace and/or less repetition. Comment aborted.")
That you've finally found a way to get rid of MCSEs once and for all?
Hot damn! Sign me up.
Without CDs, the RIAA would be forced to charge you at least $72.50 for a casette album!
Then again, they're using the same accountants that also project federal deficits...
10) The invasion of "native americans" 40,000 years ago into North and South America.
9) That Chex Mix bear climbing that pretzel tree.
8) The elephant exhibit at the Cincinnati Zoo by... elephants.
7) The forceful occupation of the sniping platform by the War Cow.
6) The spontaneous genesis of protolife on planet Earth roughly 3.5 billion years ago.
5) Mexican killer bees expanding into beer commercials in the early 80s.
4) The conquering of Asciipenisland by a battalion of strange character-based birds.
3) The outright theft of reptillian habitat by a small furry shrew-like creature awhile back.
2) The infestation of the Quatrotritcale seed storage by tribbles.
And the #1 apocalypse crazy nutcase ecologists would like to have prevented but couldn't is...
The infiltration of CmdrTaco's rectum by a trio of gerbils in Novemeber '99.
I think the question is, is ActiveXXX moral?